The joys of practical history
A job? A hobby? Or just a need to fact check? Who cares! Let's have fun.
(This is also the launch of a fundraiser! It’s at the end, but it will make more sense if you read what comes in-between.)
There is a very real discussion going on about the place of LLM’s (Large Language Models) and the use of AI in history and education—by students and educators.
New York Times (6/16/25), “A.I. is poised to rewrite history, literally.” (gift article)
New York Times (5/14/25), “The professors are using chatGPT, and the students aren’t happy about it.”
MIT Technology Review (4/11/23), “How AI is helping historians better understand our past.”
This discussion is not taking place in a vacuum, but is also within an environment of squishy truths, “Big Media” capitulation, and rampant “viral narratives” on Facebook or Tiktok. These all seem to be threatening to swamp commonly held facts that create a cohesive, shared existence.
It’s hard not to be discouraged about “The State Of Things.”
But there are other conversations being had in forums like Reddit and other places that provide a glimmer of hope. And it’s based in the idea that for every conspiracy theory, there’s someone else on a mission to prove it wrong.
In these modern day town squares, today’s Houdini’s and Amazing Randi’s are working to debunk the most recent variations on spiritualists and charlatans.
And in the Reddit forums, and other online comment sections, where writing is really the only method of communication, there is a deep conversation going on right now about what denotes “authentic” written communication vs. synthetically generated content. In these places, “spot the fake” has become a sport.
One only has to look at this very recent post in Reddit where the author bemoans, “It's gotten to the point where I notice chatGPT's linguistic style EVERYWHERE.” The playful replies really give me hope, because it shows that the author is clearly not alone in this observation, and it’s a lot of fun to chime in with your own expertise.
This all brings me to…
The act of making something that uses your brain + creativity can be fun. And bonus points if you can prove someone else wrong in the process. Heh.
Sometimes what you make is good! Sometimes you need to workshop it a bit more. But in the case of what we do here at Obscure Histories, our mission has evolved to champion the act of “making history” as a fun, satisfying, creative, intellectual practice or activity, either in written or visual form. I’m not saying it’s easy! Yes, sometimes hard is fun.
And yes, we have some constraints and limits on what is published. The big one is that all OH histories should be rooted in multiple primary sources, be it documents, photographs, original sources, interviews, etc. They should be based in fact and the analysis should flow from the available evidence.
Outside of my nonprofit board and OH writers, I’m not sure that anyone else knows that all our writers sign agreements before they submit their work. One specific clause is the insistence that writers do not use AI generated content. I always say something to the effect of “I hope you are not offended by the AI Boilerplate, but I have to put it in there, blah blah.” And nearly every one of my writers will comment on this clause. Most are “understanding,” but I can tell they are offended.
And they should be!—because they don’t create history content for OH just to cut corners on research and let someone else do the writing…
No, they write for OH because they love the act of researching and writing about history.
Our writers are “making history” and they love to do it.
OH, Jr. Update
This all being said, you will have noticed that our cadence on original history content has slowed down. But it’s because we have had to shift our resources to finalizing the OH, Jr. inaugural curriculum and infrastructure.
I know, …I know! For three years I have been talking about the History Documentary Curriculum. I know! If I told you it was almost there, you probably shouldn’t believe me.
It turns out that writing the curriculum, testing it, rewriting it, and making the ~500 videos, tutorial vignettes, more presentations, examples, activities, rubrics… and then trying to figure out how to put it online in such a way that it doesn’t completely bewilder the student is hard. It’s made harder because we are 100% bootstrapping this effort (read: all volunteer), and so we do it when we can, because we love what we do, and can’t help ourselves. But it has been super slow.
The good news is that we are literally almost there. It will need to be finalized and tested, hopefully in the next month or so, and then we will start looking to do small batch groups to test the content and stress test the systems. Humungous shout-out to Ryan Halloran at Red Star Consulting who is making all of this work, somehow. (Yay!)
But here’s the thing—this curriculum is the teaching of practical history; it’s teaching the joyful act of making history content. Like our written histories, OH, Jr. students must use “primary sources,” or “original materials” as the basis for their history documentaries. In short, they are taught to locate, evaluate, and use primary source evidence to create their history narratives. But they use this evidence to create compelling, entertaining, and informative visual stories.
As Substack “Historian Supreme” Heather Cox Richards wrote in her June 7th newsletter:
History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future. [my emphasis]
Like the world-weary chatGPT users who are now recognizing AI produced and written content, our hope is that exposure to quality sources, primary materials, and solid evaluation techniques will help OH, Jr students to move through the world recognizing when a history or an analysis has been based on good, primary evidence, or if it’s too squishy, unsupported, and can’t stand up to scrutiny. And also maybe have some fun along the way.
What the AI Startups don’t seem to get is that we (humans/people) like to make stuff. We don’t want a machine to make stuff for us. AI is a tool, and it can’t replace the sheer pleasure of creating, crafting, and producing something for the simple sake of doing it.
and now for… “MAKE HISTORY,” the FUNDRAISER
If you’ve made it this far, thank you, and you are awesome.
Here’s a new trailer I made for OH, Jr. because this History Documentary Curriculum is just the beginning.
…and secret merchandizing…
Announcing our summer fundraiser! Make History t-shirts! And not everyone can find this on our website because it is a SECRET. Right now, you get a giant SALE on the shirts because you are a subscriber. Limited time sale! Forward it to a friend! They don’t even need to subscribe to get the sale! I hope they do though!
Obscure Histories | Secret Store
After a bit, we will advertise this fundraiser a bit wider, but you can get the SECRET SALE right now. Just click to get to the SECRET STORE. (…and please pass it on…)
Thanks for being awesome, for appreciating history, and for supporting the act of making it, in all it’s various forms.
Yours in history,
Dana
Want to support OH but don’t want a t-shirt? no problem! :)